Being a good and honorable person is anything but easy; it requires personal sacrifice that most normal people aren't willing to make, either out of self-interest, self-preservation, selfishness or any other number of reasons.

Put another way, a character who adheres to this trope is someone who is more committed to a particular code of abstract ethics than he is to his own self-preservation. He believes in a pre-defined set of rules which universally apply, and he will not break said rules, even if his own death results from adhering to them in one particular instance. These types will usually justify this by claiming that living with the shame that results from having broken said rules is A Fate Worse Than Death.

In stories on the idealistic end of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, the more the insistence of honorable behavior seems impractical, or even insane, the greater the chance that it becomes the thing that turns a hopeless situation into victory. As a result, the honorable hero is vindicated and the cynics are left completely stunned at what happened.

When done well and/or consistently, such acts of decency fan the flames of idealism in the viewers' hearts; they make them cheer even harder for the hero and inspire a desire to be just as pure and honorable. When done poorly, the term "Lawful Stupid" comes to mind, as does Martyr Without a Cause.

This trope is also subject to some degree of Values Dissonance, as some actions will be seen as both honorable and reasonable to a society with a certain set of beliefs. For instance, a society which believes in an afterlife ruled by a Higher Power that judges according to a rigid code of morality would see the "honorable" choice as being also "reasonable" by virtue of the fact that the person making it is sacrificing a temporary advantage in this life for a permanent one in the life to come.

Kin refuses to wear her deceased teammate's clothes, despite having been stripped naked and left to fend for herself in the forest of death. Also, Sasuke finds himself obliged to take Ino on a date because he said he would, no matter how easily he could duck out of it, because the Uchiha Head keeps his promises.

Team 7 decides that this does not apply in the Chunin exams when Naruto gets injured. Rather than give him what treatment they can scrape up while looking for a scroll, they know that the exams are not a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and opt to get him professional medical attention even at the cost of failing.

In Sekirei: Guardian of the North, Minato refuses to use the MBI cards with no spending limit because of how much he hates MBI. Likewise, he won't let the girls do any chores or get jobs to help out because it's his job to support them all. This leaves Minato trying to support several women and himself on just his wages as a construction worker.

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